The officer who fell

Sujan Datta, TT, New Delhi, Jan. 5: Lt Col E.K. Niranjan, the only officer killed in the operations in Pathankot, fell in the air force base in the era of social media.

He was carrying a smartphone. He was not wearing a blast-shield uniform.

Search and combing had begun on Sunday morning around 7.30. The first body was spotted where it was expected: in a field of brush and shrub behind the senior non-commissioned officers' mess.

The body was pulled out by the NSG bomb disposal squad, using ropes and hooks. Having been tugged to a location chosen by the bomb squad, the first body was turned around and searched. The squad was following procedure.

The second body was 50 metres away from the first.

Before the NSG bomb disposal squad began removing the bodies, the crew went through the spot in a mine-protection vehicle of the army.

Most soldiers of the squad, and many other soldiers in the vicinity at the time, were carrying "big mobile phones", an eyewitness told The Telegraph.

Such a device is anathema in a military operation. On many encounters on the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir, officers have been known to switch off even their analog radio sets and walkie-talkies because they were in firefights where anything else did not matter.

Niranjan was the head of the bomb squad. A bomb squad follows the offensive, it is not part of an attacking force. It brings up the rear. It mops up, it combs. Its task is to ensure that when the offensive has defeated the enemy, the enemy has not left sabotage behind.

The mine-protected vehicles returned safely from the field behind the mess. That meant that area was not mined.

So Niranjan asked his men to tug the second body to the identification bay. Rolling and rocking on the green and brown land, the body of the second militant was brought in.

Then Niranjan went to his men and spoke to them. He was not wearing a bomb suit. He bent down and reversed the body, probably because it had been dragged and nothing untoward had happened.

The body exploded and Niranjan was killed. One of his men had a hand blown off, another is critically wounded. Three others have grave injuries.

The officer was a specialist in defusing bombs. Yet he fell to the simplest of ruses adopted by a terrorist: a booby-trapped body. The militant had pressed himself on the grenade or improvised explosive device after detonating it (by removing the pin). The simple action of lifting the body triggered the explosion that killed Niranjan.

Indian forces have specialised equipment - such as remote-controlled robots - to do the job that Niranjan was doing manually.

Why humans have to move a body when there are equipment to do that from a safe distance is yet to be explained.